Though the Bill was intended to enter into extradition agreements with Mainland China and Taiwan, some Hong Kong citizens were worried that they might be apprehended in Mainland China and be subjected to its jurisdiction. The Anti-Extradition Bill Movement (the Movement) in Hong Kong was sparked off by the society’s concerns towards the Fugitive Offenders and Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Legislation Bill (the Bill) introduced by the government in 2019. The implications of the findings for psychotherapy, school education, parenting, and social policies are discussed. Furthermore, proactive aggression was positively predicted by narcissism, euphemistic language, and advantageous comparison and negatively predicted by moral justification. Among the protesters, reactive aggression was positively predicted by anger towards the government, moral justification, diffusion of responsibility, impulsivity, and narcissism and negatively predicted by satisfaction with the government, advantageous comparison, and dehumanization. Nonetheless, protesters had similar psychosocial correlates of reactive and proactive aggression when compared to the non-protesters. The results revealed that compared with non-protesters, protestors had more negative traits and poorer well-being (higher levels of reactive aggression, moral disengagement, narcissism, and impulsivity lower life satisfaction more experiences of victimization by strangers related to political disputes). ANCOVA and multiple linear regression analyses were performed.
A total of 1027 local secondary and tertiary students (578 male, 449 female) aged from 12 to 25 years ( M = 16.95, SD = 3.30) completed a questionnaire measuring political participation and attitudes, victimization experiences, aggression, life satisfaction, moral disengagement, and psychopathic traits. This pioneering study examined how psychosocial factors predicted reactive and proactive aggression among adolescents and young adults in Hong Kong during the Anti-Extradition Bill Movement.